On this episode of NUTS World, I have been looking very closely at the issue of unemployment

fraud during the pandemic, both in Washington State where it's about a $600 million problem

involving apparently largely Nigeria cyber criminals who have filed 122,000 applications

using the stolen identities, and they've gotten about 600 million, which I thought was

a big number until I turned to our largest state, California.

And it turned out that the CARES Act, which President Trump signed into law on March 27,

of 2020, provided a lot of extra federal funding to states to help people who are employed

during the lockdowns.

By May 14, the U.S. Secret Service issued an alert entitled, quote, massive fraud against

state unemployment insurance programs.

By January 2021, the California State Auditor had identified that at least $11.4 billion

had been taken from the California unemployment insurance program, but the estimates are

now even higher.

In fact, many experts estimate the fraud could be as high as $31 billion.

An unbelievable amount of taxpayer money that was stolen and more importantly did not

get to the people who needed it most.

The citizens of California were unemployed due to the pandemic.

So I really want to have a better sense of how fraud on this scale could have happened.

And I'm really pleased to introduce my guest.

McGregor Scott currently serves as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District

of California.

McGregor, thank you for joining me.

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